First day of school. All of a sudden I have returned to the empty hours of autumn. For the moment I'll sit here at the kitchen table; I'll drink the rest of the coffee in the pot; I'll listen to the washing machine trudge through its cycle. And then I will rise up and work.

People are still reading that post. More than a hundred of them visited this blog yesterday. I am nonplussed, but of course pleased, but of course slightly anxious. At the same time I don't understand how any writer could not comprehend the relationship between the work of the body and the work of the mind. What about those thirty-mile walks that Dickens routinely undertook? What about Plath's furious horseback riding?

But I should stop fretting about this and move on to another subject, such as thanking my handful of regular readers for sticking with me for all these years. Believe it or not, we've managed to pass our fourth anniversary together. You know best what this odd conversation has meant to you, why you keep coming back, whether regularly or intermittently. For me it has become a synthesis of duty, loneliness, chatter, need. It is writing practice, yes, but also a thread thrown into the sea. Who is out there? What will tug back? And will I even be able to feel your pull?